Friday, December 23, 2016

In 1970, it was Martini Racing’s Hans-Dieter Dechent who offered his factory 917-043 for Porsche’s recently appointed designer, Anatole Lapine, to decorate.

Departing from the planned white-with-red ‘script’, Lapine penned the swirling ‘hippie’ design, first laying purple and then matt fluorescent green on factory-fresh white Porsche paintwork. The work was completed over the Le Mans week, using some 1,500 spray cans.

In 1975 Vasek Polak, with his unique connections, bought this car from the factory, the only complete 917L ever sold by Porsche.

It was sold as chassis 917-044, reportedly the car crashed by Kurt Ahrens in pre-Le Mans tests at the VW test track in 1970 and never subsequently raced.

However, in the process of a complete rebuild after purchase from the Polak foundation by the present owner the aluminum tube chassis showed clear evidence of a long racing history … but absolutely no sign of any crash damage.

By process of elimination it has been deduced and verified by independent experts’ examination that this is 917-043, the famous psychedelic “Hippie Car” of 1970.

That this confusion arose is not surprising; Porsche frequently swapped chassis numbers to satisfy the needs of customs documentation and race entries, making a clear and unbroken chassis history more the exception than the rule.

On the debut of the 917 in 1969, the long-tail (917L) models proved to be nearly uncontrollable as there was so little down force. In fact, they generated aerodynamic lift at the highest speeds. For 1970, an improved version was raced by the factory (although the John Wyer team still preferred the security of the 917K) and for 1971, after very significant development in the wind tunnel, the definitive 917L was raced by both factory and JW. These cars were so stable that the drivers could take their hands off the steering wheel at speeds which reached 246 mph.

In order to compete with the Porsche 917 which already had several races under its belt, yet no successes, Enzo Ferrari sold half of his personal stock in his company to FIAT in June 1969 and used some of that money to build 25 cars powered by a 5-litre V12 the Ferrari 512, it was introduced for the 1970 season.

By the end of 1970, Porsche had convincingly dominated the championship, winning 9 of the 10 races in the championship (plus some other non-championship events), with the 917K winning 7 of 8 events it was entered in; and the 908/03 winning at the Targa Florio and the Nürburgring.

Still having some of their 25 cars remaining unsold, Ferrari offered them to customers at a bargain price - a move that had hardly been imaginable less than two years previously. For Porsche, the original production series of 25 917s could not satisfy demand. Over 50 chassis were built in total. An underdog for 20 years, Porsche had turned itself into the new leader of sports car racing with the 917.

In mid-1969, even Ms. Gean Landy was involved in promoting the Dodge product. She is seen here with groceries, getting ready to cruise in the family Charger, which featured wide tires, a 440 Six Pack engine (and accompanying scoop), and modest silver paint

Well, marsupials are only found in Australia, and spare tires only show up under the front windscreen in Australian racing.. .. coincidence?

I haven't looked into why some race cars had to carry a spare tire, but I bet it's all about the race series, and I suspect it's due to calling it the GT race car, and what Grand Touring car would be without a spare tire?

As the muscle car wars developed in the early 1960s, auto manufacturers scrambled to find catchy marketing campaigns to entice the buying public into their dealerships. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, with all their divisions, as well as AMC and Studebaker, inevitably sank billions of dollars into one-upmanship in an effort to vie for the consumer's last dollar.

Automotive writer Diego Rosenberg examines the tactics and components used by manufacturers in waging war against one another in the muscle car era.

Cars were given catchy nicknames, such as The GTO Judge, Plymouth Roadrunner, Cobra, and Dodge Super Bee. Entire manufacturer lines were given catchy marketing campaigns, such as Dodge's Scat Pack, AMC's Go Package, and Ford's Total Performance. From racing to commercials to print ads, from dealer showrooms to national auto shows, each manufacturer had its own approach in vying for the buyer's attention, and gimmicks and tactics ranged from comical to dead serious.

The author tells the story of how the car companies helped the racers, and how the racers provided fodder for marketing, which in turn helped both the racers and the manufacturers. It’s a scrambled stew of goodness starting with A) the high performance versions of the manufacturer’s cars, then B) what the racers did to and with those cars to win, and finally C) what marketing did to capitalize on the performance car goodness and the racers’ results.

Each manufacturer’s offerings are covered, along with images and background on who was racing what, and then promotional material used by the manufacturers to get the word out on their successes. Inside documents, rare promotional material, and of course great shots of many of the muscle cars and limited edition racing versions are included to provide complete look at the selling of American muscle cars.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Modified to run in the ’67 CanAm Series in the US. Chassis ‘0858’was then acquired by ‘Scuderia Veloces’ David McKay for one fabulous season in Australia

just look at the induction snorkels and that spare tire... quite a strange look indeed.

the caption to the above photo:That ‘Australian’ spare tyre. Fitted as a consequence of our local sports car regs at the time. SV solution a neat one even if the weight is well outside the cars wheelbase…where else to put it!? Yellow stickers ‘Gatto Verde’ a gift from Alf Francis to McKay, McKay makes mention of it in his autobiography but not actually what the stickers mean/represent.

On February 22, 1959, the first Daytona 500 had been run, but it wouldn't be complete for another 72 hours.

There were 59 cars in 1959 -- 22 were convertibles. There were 33 lead changes. The race lasted three hours, 41 minutes and 22 seconds. Announced attendance was nearly 42,000.

Just before they crossed the finish line, Beauchamp appeared to have the edge. At the line, though, Petty appeared to have drawn even.

Beauchamp was declared the winner by Bill France; Lee Petty, the greatest disputer of decisions in the history of NASCAR, drove straight to Victory Lane alongside him, having declared himself the winner.

The speculation is that France declared Beauchamp the winner, then used the confusion to create a free publicity machine to generate limitless news for his new race track for 3 straight days.

On the evening of February 25, Bill France announced that conclusive evidence had surfaced showing that Lee Petty had indeed won. He had looked through press photos of the finish to ascertain the car in the lead.

However, Wild Bill Harrison, driving the Bob Potter Impala, claimed Petty was a lap down due to pit stops. This was collaborated by Joe Lee Johnson, another driver.

Nascar lore had been created by three days of intrigue, following only four hours of less-than-enthralling racing. This situation has come to be viewed as the quintessential Bill France stroke of genius.

"That was a PR deal," Richard Petty says, smiling slyly at the memory. "Bill France knew my daddy had won that race."

Back in 2004 it was featured in Hot Rod and was reported to have a Jerico four-speed crash box and a Ford 9-inch with a spool with 2.69:1 gears that were original to a ’58 T-bird.

The Charger carried 5,000 pounds without the driver. The stock gas tank is often filled with water for ballast, and regular ol’ Gabriel air shocks are used to level the ride. Overall, the suspension combo is frighteningly stock. You might enjoy the fact that there are no front brakes.

Originally called the Union Station, it was jointly constructed by the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad and the Oregon Short Line, both later wholly owned by the Union Pacific.

The depot once housed an emergency hospital, lunch room, baggage rooms, and offices for both of the original railroads. Most of these features are gone now, as the building was extensively renovated in the 1970s when the original slate roof was replaced by copper plates due to leaking problems.

In January 2006, three floors opened as a restaurant and music venue, fittingly called The Depot.

He was the F.I.M. 250cc Motocross World Champion in 1984 and 1985 while riding for the KTM factory racing team. After his motocross career, Kinigadner began competing in off road races such as the Paris to Dakar rally.

He also serves as a sporting director for KTM. After his younger brother and son were paralyzed in accidents, Kinigadner helped start the Wings for Life foundation, which is dedicated to finding a cure for spinal cord injuries. Being the first Austrian World Motocross Champion racing on the Austrian KTM made him a national hero in his home country.

In the Dakar he has had technical failure three times, and crashed 4 times

The first step in Kar Kraft’s chassis preparation was minimizing weight. Even though the SCCA rule book for the ’69 Trans-Am series specified a minimum weight of 2900 lbs for Group II 5.0 litre cars, the aim was to build the cars as light as possible and then bring them up to meet the minimum weight limit.

This was done by securing lead or steel ballast down low at various key points in the chassis, to move the car’s standard 55.9% front v 44.1% rear weight distribution nearer to the ideal 50/50 split.

This process of moving weight rearward was further enhanced by relocating the battery from the engine bay to the boot and discreetly lowering the engine by around 50mm and moving it back as far as the firewall would allow.

Mounting these heavy items as low as possible also had the effect of lowering the car’s centre of gravity (CoG) for greatly improved handling and cornering capabilities. The same thinking applied to construction of the fuel tank.

This was made out of two flanged halves (ie upper and lower shells). However, a Boss 302 racer featured a much deeper bottom section than standard to drop the fuel load as close as possible to the road. This idea was duplicated in the Bathurst-style “drop tanks” seen on Torana L34 and A9X racers in the mid 1970s.

The Mustang bodyshells had already begun a weight loss program on the production line, as they were built without any weather sealing or sound deadening compounds. Kar Kraft then removed any brackets not required for competition and either drilled a zillion holes in any component that had to remain, or re-made it in aluminium. Not a single nut or bolt was overlooked in this weight loss process, right down to the internal window winding mechanisms which even had shorter crank handles to save weight.

Although acid dipping was strictly outlawed under SCCA rules on safety grounds, the practice was in fact widespread in Trans-Am to trim fat from a race car.

Lessons learned from running stock-bodied sedans at 200mph on the NASCAR super speedways and Kar Kraft’s own GT 40 Le Mans program had exposed the considerable performance gains to be made from cars with good air penetration.

Kar Kraft began by trimming 25mm from the height of the radiator support panel; the engine bay inner guards were then tapered down from the firewall on each side to match.

This substantially lowered the front aerodynamic profile of a Boss 302 race car. The inner halves of the rear wheel housings were also discreetly moved in-board by as much as 75mm on each side to provide adequate clearance for the 12-inch wide rear racing tires, as only minimal flaring of the external wheel arch lips was permitted.

To maximise torsional rigidity, the shell was fully seam-welded and two sturdy braces were connected to the front suspension towers; one spanned directly across the engine bay between the two towers and another braced the towers rigidly to the firewall. The base of the towers were also treated to some substantial reinforcing plates as fitted to the road going Boss 302.

The front suspension subframe was notched about 20mm on either side where it bolted to the chassis, which had the effect of raising the sub-frame further into the car and permitting a lower static front ride height. This left only 25mm of belly clearance above the road surface and was another important gain in lowering the centre of gravity for optimum handling and cornering power. It also explains why (in combination with the tapered front sheetmetal) a standard 1969 Mustang looks so high at the front compared to Moffat’s Trans-Am version!

A special track test conducted by Road and Track magazine had one of the factory cars driven by George Follmer at the quarter mile in 12.9 seconds, it generated just over one g of cornering force and almost halved the Boss 302 road car’s 130km/h braking distance from 90 metres to just 54. A lot of that was due to Lincoln Continental brakes.

The combination of Lincoln front brakes and Ford rears resulted in different wheel stud patterns front and rear, but under Australian racing rules all four wheels had to be interchangeable. Moffat had to re-drill his wheel centres so that they could be bolted to either end.

the race car had a factory race spec engine, with a pair of 1080 cfm Holleys, and a street version for sale to customers had only a 780 cfm Holley. The race engine had a huge oil pump with 3 pick ups, and a baffled sump, and 12 to 1 compression for 470 hp. Street cars were 10.5 to 1 and only had about 350 hp.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

the car is good looking enough to not need her... but since when do models get on TOP of the cars? Maybe I missed hundreds of thousands of photos like this... but I don't remember ever seeing a model on the roof of a car... with dirty shoe soles

here's the crazy part... the designer later on went on to Ghia for 3 decades and designed the Pinto and Escort.

here is something else, it was a roller... the engine wasn't built, just looked good from the outside, so they had to pull it up the mountain for these photos with that earth mover

The photo shoot was on top of a mountain near Como, Italy was shot by noted racing photographer Rainer Schlegelmilch,